Often when a franchise runs out of ideas rather than look forward it’s creators look backwards, not always with great results. I’m looking at you Mr Lucas. Bungie however I’m happy to say haven’t fallen into the vanity trap that snared the aforementioned George and have created a masterpiece as a final hurrah as they pass the Halo mantle to 343 Industries.

I’m not going to give the plot away as you can find the details on lots of other websites and as you might suspect the usual sci-fi clichés are all here but without the clumsiest you often see in this genre. It looks beautiful and I kept having mini flashbacks recalling how it felt the first when I played the original Halo: Combat Evolved, I even paused almost every time Noble 6 went outside just to take in the view. There’s just enough new stuff to keep you interested and of course all the familiar Halo stuff to make you feel at home, although I did miss dual weld (unless of course I missed it).

It’s enough to say I have a severe case of Attention Deficient Disorder when it comes to games and unless compelled I rarely finish them, the Halo series is the exception. Thank you Bungie!

It was about a year ago that I saw Project Natal demonstrated for the first time and I was blow away by the possibilities it presented…so colour me happy that Natal, now called Kenect, has been officially announced. The launch titles are to be frank standard Wii fare but don’t be fooled, having see Project Milo there’s huge potential far beyond the usual sports, dance and endless bolt on motion control titles beloved of Nintendo’s platform. As well as the endless entertainment options one rather neat idea I’ve seen mentioned is using Kenect as a video conferencing endpoint for Office Communications Server.

They’ll also be a new slimmed down and shiner Xbox 360 with built in WiFi and a 250Gb HDD, but most important of all it’s said to be ‘whisper quiet’.

A while ago I saw Peter Molyneux demo Natal and I was frankly stunned by the possibilities not just for gaming but how we interact with hardware in general. With the annual gadget sheep dip at CES going on at the moment it’s bound to get an airing.

As if things weren’t bad enough with Tiberium Wars I mentioned below Matt kindly gave me his copy of Oblivion after he’d closed all the gates in about 140 hours. Games like this should be banned under some kind of Geneva Convention for Social Lives as 3 hours in and I’m hooked.

Just played the 360 demo and it’s pretty impressive. As an RTS addict C&C has been the drug of choice since for sometime and the 3rd installment looks like if might give me the fix the Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II didn’t quite deliver. My only concern is that the RTS genre hasn’t really moved on since Dune 2…build a ton of units, move across map, wipe out bad guys, rinse then repeat.